Portsmouth Mediation Service

Who we are

We desire to be at the centre of seeing Portsmouth become a ‘Restorative City’ – we see that the opposite of RJ is our current system of Retributive Justice.  In simple terms the victim is sidelined, the offence is against the State or the Queen as Head of State, and the Crown will take retribution as it punishes the offender.  Restorative Justice on the other hand seeks to achieve reconciliation between crime victims and the persons who have harmed them.  It begins to answer the questions of the victim.  RJ has its heart in Relationships, Respect & Responsibilities – indeed respect & responsibilities are key to right relationships.  The whole idea of restorative justice is to repair the breach in moral trust and establish lasting peace instead of lasting hurt, regret or conflict.  Some refer to the restorative approach as a peacemaking ethics.  It includes the following characteristics:

• Justice requires restoring victims, offenders, and communities who have been injured by crime.
• Victims, offenders, and communities should have the opportunity to be fully active as part of the justice process.
• Government should restore order, but the community should be responsible for restoring peace.

We have made a fundamental change to the work of our organisation through the introduction of Restorative Justice and a Restorative approach.  Our team are all trained as Restorative Facilitators and we will use these new skills to help bring about a deeper peace to the conflict that is referred to us – a Just peace!

As an important peace hub in Portsmouth, we will also become more involved with prevention of conflict, we will actively seek and promote Restorative practices in our schools, we will start with primary schools – working with educational professionals to help develop healthy relationships, identify common values and promote and strengthen a sense of belonging and ownership.  We will eventually work with every school in Portsmouth that recognises this value and desires our help. As a Voluntary Organisation we will seek to recruit passionate like minded volunteers to help achieve our mission.

We are currently working with The Safer Portsmouth Partnership to become a provider of Restorative Justice.